Day 20
Best day so far.
The new interns have halved our workload. So we have time to think and breath which feels amazing.
The day started as per usual with emulsions. I made two (of the same) and I managed to split one again. As it was a fairly slow morning, I managed to pull in Harriet and Laura to help me work out where I was going wrong on the emulsions. Lovely Laura managed to partially split the emulsion when she was trying to show me how to do it properly. The conclusion, from the very adept Harriet, was that it is a very unstable emulsion inherently which was additionally complicated by the varying fat and protein content of our artisanal cotija cheese. I sighed a big relief at realising it’s a tough job that other people struggle with!
We flew through our morning to do list and managed to start cleaning and mincing shrimp way before our morning meeting deadline. What a wonderfully perfect day!
After morning meeting we did a bit of criollo picking, masa portioning and tomato peeling.
Each doing our jobs, we stood over the two metal tables in the prep kitchen and laughed. We discussed life, long weekend plans (we have Sunday & Monday off!) and how we were going to fill up the rest of day.
Today, I also watched in absolute awe as 21 year old Laura demonstrated the best knife skills I’ve seen. It was very simple. She was slicing a small white onion, standing straight, right hand choking up on the knife with her pointer finger and thumb holding the base of the blade. With her left hand, she arched her fingers with the tips resting on the onion and she kept the blade of her knife against her left fingers. She cut the onion into equal, thin slices. At one point Hannah came up and started speaking to her. She looked away from her knife and at Harriet, continuing her perfect, fast chopping. It’s a technique I’m familiar with but it was the most beautiful execution I’ve seen to date.
Sadly Laura finished work today. She was very sweet – reassuring me in tough moments that we all have the same doubts and struggles.
Alas – another week done. And it was a great one.
Nighty night.